U.S. President Donald Trump attends a working lunch with leaders of G7 and the Middle East during the G7 summit, in Evian-les-Bains, France, June 16, 2026. REUTERS Christian HartmannPool
In the wake of Lindsey Graham’s death, President Donald Trump’s “barbed eulogy” to the senator and former ally revealed the true depths of the famously narcissistic Commander in Chief’s “fragile ego.” This is according to Guardian political analyst Adam Gabbat, who on Wednesday declared voters can, “add eulogies to the list of things Trump does with total confidence and questionable skill.”
Gabbat raises the example of an interview with Fox News on Monday, in which “Trump remembered Graham as someone who called him too much, as a poor golfer and, in the manner of a person remembering a pet labrador, as someone who ‘loved being outside.’ There was praise, sure, but it was tempered with criticism, as if the president’s famously fragile ego meant he needed to assert dominance over Graham, even after the latter’s death.”
And when prompted for anecdotes about the late Senator, notes Gabbat, Trump responded, “He was a great guy, and he was a friend. He would call me all the time. He would just … I’d say: ‘Stop calling me, Lindsey,” adding, “He was just – he was amazing. You know, he just didn’t stop and he would be – he was a worker. He was a total workaholic politician. Now, some people don’t call that work. Some people call that a lot of talking. But everybody loved him.”
According to Gabbat, “Trump’s backhanded compliments and mixed reviews spoke to the complicated relationship he had with Graham. While running for president in 2016, Graham described Trump as a ‘jacka–’ and ‘a race-baiting bigot.’ After Trump won that election, Graham made a complete U-turn, becoming – like most of his Republican colleagues – a Trump lickspittle, but after the January 6 insurrection, he (briefly) broke with the president.”
“Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey – I hate it to end this way,” he said in a speech at the time. “Oh my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he’s been a consequential president but today, first thing you’ll see. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.” Gabbat notes that Graham “reversed course soon after, returning to the Trump fold and just last month praising the president as ‘not far behind God.’ But Trump is not known for his short memory when it comes to disloyalty.”
Trump brought it up during his eulogy to Fox News, saying, “He had one bad moment, that was the Jan 6 thing, when he stood up: ‘All right, now I’ve had it. That’s it. I can’t do it any more,’ Then he called me about 40 minutes later and he said: ‘Did I really say that? I can’t believe it,’ and he took it back. So I give him a 99 instead of a 100.” According to Gabbat, “Trump went on to gloat about how he won the 2016 Republican primary in South Carolina, after Graham was forced to suspend his campaign.”
In the end, writes Gabbat, “however much Trump appreciated Graham’s subservience, he just couldn’t drop that sporadic criticism. ‘He’d play golf with people and you just liked him,’ Trump remembered of Graham on Monday. ‘It wasn’t that he was a great striker of the ball it wasn’t, he wasn’t exactly a perfect – he wasn’t Jack Nicklaus, he was not Tiger.’ There was something revealing across all of Trump’s comments: a reminder, perhaps, that Trump’s fragility means he always has to be number one, always has to be dominant – even if the person he is dominating is now dead.”